The Intriguing Journey To Confidence

Welcome and welcome back to this newsletter. Today I wanted to talk about the journey of self-confidence, at least my experience with it lately.

To begin with this story, I do not claim to be an expert, only to share my journey.

Nor is it a completed journey, just one I’ve travelled down the way.

I do find it intriguing as well because I’m sure it isn’t quite unique.

With that, hopefully sharing my experiences with this topic will help those struggling with self-confidence move forward a little more smoothly and quickly. Hopefully, those that are further along, to feel more open to telling their stories as well.

This is a topic that I’ve wanted to talk about for a long time, but didn’t want to get shuffled away due to the algorithms, and didn’t want to sound like a broken record by repeating myself because the posts disappear so quickly. So I’m very excited to include this topic onto the newsletter.

What makes this topic so intriguing?

To be honest, I think it’s a journey that is interestingly messier than what it appears at surface level. I think if we were honest with ourselves, many would agree. To credit quite a few creators here, they have been honest and share their professional and personal journeys – without jumping ahead, we’ll get back to that later.?

The inner voice would say, ‘well because there are people better than you at “X” nobody will want to hire you or listen to you or think that what you have to say matters… you get the idea. It was this toxic inner voice that really developed from a distorted view on reality.

There were a few factors that really helped me out in getting out of that pit of self- deprecating despair. The biggest factor, the one near and dear me, is praying it out. I know, not everyone will agree on that, and that’s okay, you can skip this one. But for me, it was recognizing this hurt inside, and lifting it up to the Lord. It also helps having a wife and dear friends that have prayed for me in this endeavor throughout the years, whether directly or indirectly. It’s having that community ( a topic for another day) that helped me along that journey, and staying grounded in my faith, as well as keeping things in perspective.

Another factor that helped me in building self-confidence is having the self-awareness of self-improvement. It's being humble enough to say, I can improve in these areas of my life – but not going overboard and saying, I can’t, or it’s pointless, or somebody will just be better at that. That last bit, there’s an interesting thing I heard to possibly help combat that.?

Let's dive into that.

I heard a few quotes here on the platform and floating around the internet that really helped put things in perspective.

They were something along the lines of -

"You don't have to be better, you have to be different."

"There are less qualified people than you doing the things you want to do, simply because they decided to believe in themselves."

"Everyone is a genius.?But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” - that one being Albert Einstein's quote.

It may sound hokey I suppose, but hearing that and seeing folks on this platform and elsewhere apply those principles in their professional and personal lives really helped. That is why I'm a firm believer in telling your story, the legit story. Unfortunately, we do see people create fake stories for clicks and reach, that really take away from the legitimate stories that can help people.

For myself, I feel more confident in my abilities both professionally and personal. Specific examples, if you are curious are -

Putting my photography work out there. It's something near and dear to me, and it's been really cool to be recognized for that skill set - and hopefully to grow and develop in that area.

Something I need to get back into doing, if I had to be honest -

Getting in front of the camera. This is more the perfectionist in me, because I also want to be known for good video work. Initially, when I began posting videos on LinkedIn, it helped with my confidence. It does take a bit of courage to get in front of a camera.

Creating on content in other languages and finding opportunities to use that skill set. I spend a lot of time in my free time practicing languages. It's a weird hobby, I know. I think that drive comes from being made fun a lot for how I sound in Spanish growing up. I want to make sure I lose the accent as much as possible, not only in Spanish, but in the other languages I have ventured in learning. If you're reading this and are hesitant - I get it. But we can do it! Just take the time to practice and get the content out there.

Another venture - Writing. Which is why this is being created!

Similar to creating videos, or sharing photography, or any other content in the web, you really don't know how the feedback is going to be with writing. Which brings me to the my final point - rejection.

I strongly believe that it's important to know how prevalent rejection is. And I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just there's almost 8 billion people in the world, you're bound to not be someone's cup of tea. I think growing up, I knew there would be rejection, but didn't realize how much of it there is. We are doing a disservice to folks and kids by not being upfront with this early on. In my experience, I was told this - and it was still difficult. I remember, for example, trying to find a job after losing my job back in May 2005. I applied to a lot of places, tried to find something lined up with my degree, only to get no where, and exhausted my savings. Perhaps in recognizing that many of us have similar stories, while rejection may sting, it doesn't paralyze from doing something awesome.

Well, if you made it this far, I want to thank you for taking the time for reading this newsletter. Being this the first one officially, I am very eager to make sure the following ones are fascinating and thought provoking, and allow y'all to get to know me a bit more.

I would love to hear your stories on your own journeys of confidence. Later down the road, depending on the feedback, I would love to do a collaboration and have a podcast episode about this. So we shall see!

Until the next post, take care, and stay intrigued....